Si se puede

The march this morning was off the hook. The stuff within Sacramento was huge -- like over 10,000 people I'm sure, though pride n' politics as usual rerouted the original plan (one group powerhulked the plan of another and decided to march through the whole city instead of holding the rally at the designated spot, bleh) -- but it was the march from Davis to Sacramento that was even more awesome. I thought maybe twenty people would actually wake up and be willing to trudge eleven miles across the causeway beginning at 7:30 since I had to think a minute before deciding I would do it myself, but there were actually at least 150 people who showed up for that. That only included about twelve law students, lots of undergrads, lots of high school students, and even some junior high students. They had so much energy the whole time and were the most well-behaved demonstrators I've ever seen, walking double-file and staying within the left lane of the causeway, and observing all traffic rules and keeping gaps in driveways throughout the walk within East Sacramento.

The decision to do the causeway was so brilliant because it was perfectly legal (though some cops tried to give us trouble before we even set off but then backed off when Mercy said she was a law student and knew that we could walk without a permit as long as we kept one lane open -- brown people who know their rights; watch out ) and not literally interfering with traffic, but then it totally did interfere because all these rubberneckers were like "." A lot of people honked and gave thumbs up and other enthusiastic gestures, but of course we also had some thumbs down and "Get a Green Card" type comments. A couple of journalists walked or biked the whole causeway with us, mostly in support, I think. Some smirking dick journalists were at the scene before we departed, and one of them asked these two kids who were clearly on the younger end what they thought about people carrying Mexican flags -- and these kids didn't even have Mexican flags.

It will be interesting to see how the media covers the march, since I didn't see a single disorderly or illegal activity take place, and everyone seemed really mature and informed. There were lots of families, and I noticed this one cameraman spend like hell of minutes zooming in on these two young girls with stickers on their faces that were cheering and shit. I'm sure they'll try to make that out to be hell of representative of the march. Also, there were way more American flags than Mexican flags (not that it should fuckin' matter), but I could see them skewing that too.

The cops within Sacramento were actually really helpful and helped clear traffic for us.